23 May 2017

Why use analog films in digital era…well the movies didn’t kill the theaters, photography didn’t kill painting, keyboards didn’t kill handwriting (yet…). In a similar fashion, why drive a vintage car or fly a biplane. Everything vintage is on the rise. Just I never stopped shooting in films. I even bought 2 more film cameras in digital times…

25 October 2016

29 July 2016

Victor Lenoir’s tomb. A French doctor who was a pioneer in women’s fertility. Notice the erection on the statue! Would see that in America I guess. The legend says his erection will help fertility so women come and rub it, some even sit on it.

27 February 2016

That’s my beauty, a 1961 Rolleiflex 3.5F. Medium format film, that is 6x6cm negatives. Not the quickest camera I have used so far but I love it. Many masters of the previous century have used it beautifully. It is then a good incentive.

23 August 2015

I was born in Cologne, or Köln, and left when I was a teen but Mom stayed there for quite some more years. So when I turned 18, I asked a camera and got a lot of practice while visiting her on holidays

Street photography before it became fashionable. I was young, eyeing Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson…I learnt a lot with a great Minolta X700.

Yeah I know I should clean those white specks and scratches. But I wanted to show what it looked like in B/W before hitting the brush and ink and correct the whole lot. Painful work. As opposed to the various editing programs nowadays.

14 April 2015

18 March 2015

A beautiful DC 6, a venerable lady from the 40’s sits forgotten in Lokichoggio, NW Kenya. It was flyable 15 years ago. A pilot had plans to clean it up and fly her back to the USA in the late 90’s. Then he would have volunteered for the Iraq war. No news since then. In the meantime a tree has grown between 2 of the famous mythical radial engines and maybe now the costs to restore are prohibitive. I had no access to this one.

But her sister had a few doors open, so I jumped on the wing and offered myself a tour inside. My colleague has flown both of them in the 90’s! I envy him so much. I prefer older airplanes…(which also implies days with a lot less of painful aeronautical administrations!)

The paint and the propellers came off. The old owner’s name appears beneath.

I wish my Caravan had such a beaten silver engine cowling…

Surprisingly the interior was not looted nor too trashed. The oxygen bottle was intact, most of the instruments are still there….

10 tons could be lifted in normal conditions. In the African bush, a bit more…

I found that old dirty oxygen mask. Poor pilots who had to don that heavy rubber mask, it looks very uncomfortable…